42 Bots vs 14 Tanks

See this is the main point. Say both players have 3 factories And are 30 second apart. His attacking dox should reach your base similar to your first scout. If you are content with your 3 factory only build then you are safe as it is easy to defend your small expansions with ants and then use your excess ants to kills his expansions. But if both players are expanding similarly then the dox player has a huge advantage. He will be able to squeeze your start build so much that he has the time to build a 3rd veh factory and then you are surely behind. Either way I see you falling behind just because of attacker advantage.

Defenders advantage you mean?

Nah attacking advantage and defender advantage are different. You have attacking advantage when you attack his expansions and force him to react but it is defenders advantage when you attack his main or production. Well that's my opinion I suppose, not fact.

Except Dox have crazy low DPS and economy buildings are way high in HP.

Dox have a DPS of 20 and Metal Extractors have an HP of 1,000. It taxes 1 Dox 50 seconds to kill 1 metal extractor and 3 Dox 16.6 seconds to kill 1 metal extractor, or 5 Dox 10 seconds to kill 1 metal extractor. That's more than enough time to get units over there to defend.

And even then, you can pre-emptively prevent those raids with ease with Radar, a Laser Tower, a few Ants, Bumblebees, etc.

I agree with this reasoning here, but you forget that tanks steamroll through bots. All it takes is an army of 30 or so mixed tanks to deal some serious damage to the main base of you, the dox player. And what if the fourth factory is air? Then harassment becomes easy as cake for either player.

jup and thats why you better be the first to have tanks imo.

Bots need a viable front line unit and aa bot. Raiding is good and all but other units already seem to do it better, and a high dps front line unit isn't really there.

In numbers I would suggest
HP: 40->100
Damage: 10x2-> 15x2 or 20x2(DPS 20-> 30 or 40)
range->range 50-> 75

they removed the AA bot, because you would have 2 units(AA bot and AA tank) that make the same thing, but w/ the advantage to the Bot, so for the front-line you make tanks...
but Bots could be usefull on larger maps(acting as Skirmishers)

If only you could like....make them do things differently or something instead of completely removing a very vital role.........oh wait, you CAN do that!

Mike

I disagree.

In my opinion they should be different.

Bots: Utility, Scouting, AA, Raiding. High vision radius, agile (fast turn rate, fast acceleration), low HP, low range.
Tanks: Assult, Pew Pew! Lower vision radius, not agile (slower turn rate, slower acceleration), higher HP, longer range.

Notice how I didn't mention speed. Their top speed should be the same so that they can be used together easily. Also I didn't mention turret turn rate or accuracy as if that is slow or low then micro becomes a huge factor in play.

Conclusion:

Make AA a bot.
Make the scout a bot.
Make bomb bots vehicles.

Leave most of the HP as is. Make vehicles vision low, make bots vision high.

If you make bots or vehicles able to do all tasks then you'll only ever build bots or vehicles, never both. that's lame.

Edit: I just had another thought, if bots are utility and tanks are assult then you could also remove the vehicle fabber and make the combat fabber a vehicle. (Ensue rage that a vehicle fabber removal would break the lovely symmetry of fabbers types building their advanced factory versions). Screw that, Fabbers already build random other **** like orbital and t1 factories of other types. just let the bot fabber build t2 vehicles.... or removed the notion of vehicle and bot factories and just have land factories that build both. It's kinda strange that land has two factory options but naval and air only have 1.

>.< I don't want rock paper scissors bullshit here. The whole bots beat air, air beats vehicles is really dumb.
Instead allow cross usage of roles but done in a different way.
For example the T1 tank and dox should both be a front line fighter.
Tank: High health heavy hitting, low dps, slow
Bots: Lower health, cheaper high dps, fast
With this both factories are able to keep ALL the roles but they are just done in a different ways. Keeping bots to the raiding role makes them near damn useless if I can't put them in my army and expect results from them. Make boom bots raiders not dox, they are already better at dox at raiding anyways.
Another example for AA
Stinger, Consistent missiles, low damage low range, low cost
Spinner, volley of aa, high range heavy damage, long reload time, heavy cost.
This once again gives both factories the roles AND encourages you to use both types of units.

wait, what you mean...
AA bots, or Buffed Bots that can assault enemy bases in larger maps?

I'll ask you this, if both factories can do everything. Then what's the point of having both factories? If there is no rock paper scissors then should we not just have 1 unit that can do everything?

I was specifically talking about AA bots but it applies to pretty much every possible role, there is pretty much always a method of doing something differently from something and achieving the same desired result. My AA Weapon Trinity is basically this as well, it's 3 broad categories of AA weapons that all do the same CORE job, but approach the execution of that job in different ways and not only do that but they're also all complimentary to each other as well.

That's pull it quite to the extreme no? Kinda like I described above, there is a difference between the Core task of hte unit and the specific Execution it uses to achieve the desired result. Having each factory cover the same core jobs is one thing, but having the shared units execute it the same way is another. That was the problem with the original Bot AA, the weapon was identical to that of the Vehicle AA, instead of flat out removing the Bot AA they should have tried a different method for it to carry out it's role.

Mike

Because both factories achieve both roles in a different way. Having a combined army will be better and more versatile than an army made up of 1 unit.

For example a all tank army will lack a sustained dps and a all bot army lacks heavy armor to soak up damage. This allows a army composed of only one type of unit to be useful and one with multiple types to be the best. This way both factories are very viable to use throughout the game as well.

Requiring a player to build two types of factories and two units of some magic proportion and potentially microing the HP strong to the front and the HP weak to the back just seems like an awfully complicated way of doing the same thing as just having 1 front line assault unit. I think that most players in most situations will forego this added complication in favour of just using one unit as it's almost as effective and requires no micro.

That... actually is kind of the direction Uber wants to take. Basically, they want bots to be so necesary that their use beats someone without, but they want tanks to mainly be the units that actually attack.

So on top of the fast raiding dox and the boom suicide bot, moving AA and scouting to bots increase the roster of utility bots as well as the combat fabber and the grenadier.

Then, give ants and infernos some new friends. Make a rapid fire laser tank for bot swarms, maybe a vehicle AA that also shoots ground while sucking against both, maybe an AOE self destruct unit while the boom is single target self destruct, the tank has lower damage but higher AOE so it half damages 10+ tanks or stright up kills 30 bots if bots are dumb enough to be around it.

Then bots will be utility and vehicles will be combat. Sounds fair enough.

All mighty gods of PA. Bless these fine gentlemen and their ideas of wisdom.

That ... actually makes sense.

And while at it, rip the Vanguard apart, too? That thing has enough features for 2-3 individual units.

Fantastic suggestions.

You should create a thread with those suggestions, they deserve more visibility.